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THE IMPORTANCE OF BUILDING A PERSONAL BRAND

I am a Social Media Person.

By this phrase I essentially mean that like most of you, I live my life online. Only it’s not just a hobby it is also my full time job and the love of my life. Or the bane of my existence depending on whether Facebook has released another new algorithm for business pages – and I still haven’t forgiven Instagram.

Since I moved down to London to work as a Social Media Manager, I’ve met all kinds of fantastic people, but one of the people who stands out most in my mind is a lovely chap I met at Social Day – a day of networking and presentations for Social Media People by Social Media People. Tom is one of those social wonder kids who basically does All Of The Good Things for incredible companies such as Google and Hootsuite and after Social Day in March he very kindly checked out my blog and YouTube channel, and one of the first things he said upon reading my content was that I have a strong personal brand.

This comment stuck with me over the last few months and made me consider why no matter whether you’re a blogger, YouTuber, whether you work in social media, or whether the whole thing is just a way of unwinding in the evening – your personal brand is possibly the most important thing you’ll put out online.

Think about it for a second – let your brain consider your favourite blogger or YouTuber, what’s the first thing that comes to mind about them? Do you immediately think about how much you really love the layout of their blog, their photography or their latest post? Or do you immediately think about the person behind all that and about how much you just like them?

The way you put yourself across online is a massive indicator as to how your content is going to be received. If you keep your social media voice consistent, if you talk about the same topics, use the same sort of colour palette or layout and have your unique personality available for all to see then you’ll be remembered. On the flip side, if you’re changing your design and blog topic and general aesthetic every five minutes people will be confused as to the message you’re actually trying to give out.

This information probably isn’t anything new for you – consistency in the blogging world is after all, key, but is it something we consider away from our blogs and YouTube channels themselves? Do you consider it with every tweet that you write or every status update on your blog’s Facebook page?

For a long time, I didn’t. Then I spoke to Tom and it made me realise that this consistency across all channels, this honest to God representation of myself, no holds barred, no sugarcoating is the unique selling point that I’ve spent my whole blogging career looking for. We are all so concerned with finding the thing that will make us stand out among the masses, that will make our blog successful so that we can reach that milestone or work on that campaign or improve that statistic that sometimes we forget that the unique selling point we all have that can’t be truly replicated by anyone else is ourselves.

Consider this next time you tweet or post to Instagram – are you being true to yourself and your brand?

I am by no means an expert no matter how long I’ve worked in social for, and therefore I’d love to know your opinion on this. Let me know in the comments below if you agree with me or even if you think I’m talking an absolute load of rubbish – I’m really curious to see everyone’s opinions 🙂

(Also apologies if this isn’t the most well worded post in the world – I’m running on 2 hours sleep after an 8 hour work day and the long trip back up North for the weekend so please forgive me).

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Comments

I've been pretty terrible, I've been changing username, topic, aesthetic and I've been anything other than consistant. You definitely have a strong personal brand, whenever I'm feeling a bit stuck creatively I come to your blog and it inspires me to develop my own. x

Really great post! I'm always trying to find my 'style' and brand, but admittedly changing it up too much haha. I've become more consistent with posts and I'm starting to find me 'niche' (I hope) so hopefully that will help. I love what you talked about with the colour palettes, it's s important! And fonts too.Sarahscarletstate.co.uk

I used to do the same – pretty much right up until the start of this year really although I think my identity clothing wise has been pretty consistent for around a year. Fonts are hugely important! Anything that makes you recognisable really 🙂 xox

It's definitely important to create your own brand. Why we are and how we present ourselves. I'm still figuring out, because I'm still figuring out myself. This is great Lucy <3xx Bash | go say H E Y B A S H